1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a spray nozzle and orifice assembly. Particularly, this invention is drawn to a novel spray nozzle assembly that is designed to discharge highly directional pressurized jets of cleaning fluid such that, when positioned in an inverted rotatable bottle, maximum cleansing of the bottle or container is accomplished.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
Current nozzle systems for spraying the inside of bottles come in a variety of configurations. The most common design comprises an elongated tube or conduit that supports a nozzle spray head having one or more discharge apertures or orifices. Typically, this spray nozzle is inserted in a bottle which is usually held in an inverted position. Water, air, and detergents individually or in various combinations, are discharged from the nozzle spray head orifices to clean and rinse the bottle before refilling it with a beverage product. Representative of the above described common design are the spray nozzle systems disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,227,734 and 4,099,674 which describes reciprocating spray nozzles that move up and down within of a stationary bottle, that is moved intermittently, to spray jets of fluid therein. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,099,674, the nozzle head has an annular lateral aperture for discharging a 360.degree. flat spray against the bottle sidewall and has a central discharge orifice at the head of the nozzle for discharging a cylindrical stream at the bottom portion of the bottle. In U.S. Pat. No. 2,227,734, the spray nozzle includes three longitudinally positioned orifices.
A different concept for spraying the inside of bottles is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,652,599 and 5,092,356. These spray nozzle systems do not provide for the spray nozzle to be inserted within the confines of an invertedly positioned bottle, but instead use a fluid delivery pipe having a nozzle unit with a discharge bore that is oblique or perpendicular to the axis of the pipe. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,092,356, the pipe and nozzle unit rotates, with spray jets issuing from the discharge bore form a surface of a shallow cone. Thus, the spray jets impinge solely on the bottle sidewall and only reach the bottom of the bottle by deflection.
In all of these nozzle systems, the bores forming the discharge apertures are short-throw compared to the size of the orifices, and result in fluid jets that are largely unfocused and not well defined. Moreover, these systems do not contemplate or provide for the rotation of the inverted bottle which helps to increase the cleaning effectiveness in high speed bottle cleaning operations.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,536,263 and 5,125,425 both disclose spray nozzles which produce high energy jets which loosens and detaches particular matter struck by the jet.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,925,224 and 4,828,178 both disclose extremely small nozzle orifices, but neither of these references disclose an elongated bore of small diameter.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,828,178 discloses the use of Electron Discharge Machining for forming a spray disk, but not for forming an elongated bore of small diameter.
Furthermore, the fluids issuing from discharge orifices found in current spray nozzle systems cannot effectively clean the difficult to reach bottom portions of a bottle interior, for e.g., the annular seating ring portion of a Champagne type bottle, without some sort of pretreatment bath or other cleansing steps which are time consuming and not cost effective. Thus, in these designs, effective cleaning depends primarily on the chemistry of the fluids discharged rather than by mechanical impingement.
Accordingly, a nozzle spray system that provides for the rotation of an inverted bottle while being sprayed with fluid jets would be highly desirable for increasing the cleaning effectiveness in high speed bottle cleaning operations. Additionally, a spray nozzle system having elongated microbores with small discharge orifices that will discharge fluid streams in oriented and well defined paths would be extremely desirable.
Moreover, it would be highly desirable for a spray nozzle to discharge fluid jets in a predetermined pattern such that when in combination with a rotating bottle, hard to reach soils accumulated at the bottom of a bottle can be effectively cleaned in shorter periods of time.